What should I expect?!?

My son is 6 wks and 2 days, he was born at 33 1\2 wks. What should I be expecting him to do, realistically? My Ped. says to treat him like a newborn but it's so confusing to me. I want to do everything possible to help him adequately adjust. It's hard to put the NICU behind us and move forward, I'm trapped in the mindset that he should always be sleeping and only wake to eat, but he is having more time awake now, and it stresses me out not knowing if he's capable of functioning on the level of a 6 wk old as far as sleeping and eating needs or if I should be doing something different. :( I'm sure my worries are common but I would appreciate any advice from those of you who have been through this. How did you let go of the NICU?

Comments (4)

It was very hard for me. My son was in the NICU for 8 weeks, and it was an adjustment to bring him home. But we did. I'm acutally having the opposite problem. My son is 6 mnths actual, 3 months and 3.5 weeks old adjusted. And he's still sleeps like he's a newborn. It's kind of annoying. If he's awake he's onry, he acts like he should be sleeping still. I swear he's asleep more than he is awake. I think you just need to learn how to go with the flow. I know hard to do after the structure of the NICU, but trust me it makes life easier if you just let him do what he wants and try not to put him on a schedule. Save the schedule for later. Feed him when he wants to eat and let him sleep as much or as little as he wants. Just make sure that if he acts tired but doesn't want to sleep that you get him to or he'll get over tired and then become onry! OK I hope I didn't confuse you even more! LOL it's late here and I'm a little sleepy!

No, that wasn't confusing at all :) Thank you. So you just let go of everything that they told you about them getting too tired and not eating enough and being awake too long? Just throw it out? I guess I should do that, their voices are echoing in the back of my mind and quite frankly that makes me more stressed and crazy than my son's constant needs lol.

Hi, I know exactly where you're coming from and you explained it really well as that is how I felt too! My son was also born around the 33 and half week mark and is now just over 12 weeks old. I heard conflicting things from the neonatologists in the NICU and my pediatrician (and I still hear their voices!), some said to treat him like a normal newborn when he came home and others told me he would not be acting like a 'normal' baby until he'd had some time to catch up and to make sure we don't over-stimulate him.

This is my second child and I have definitely noticed he is not doing things that my first son was doing at this age (or things that the books say a 12 week old should be doing) so there is definitely some confusion for me and I agree with the other person that you are probably best off just letting Riley dictate what he needs in terms of sleep and feeding.

I know all babies are different but if it gives you any indication of what to expect, I definitely feel more settled and relaxed now compared to when he was 6 weeks old so I think I have managed to distance myself from the NICU experience a little bit (not entirely though!) so hopefully you won't feel like this for too much longer.

The other thing I would say is that we have noticed a big change in our son in the last 3 weeks (so since he was about 9 weeks old), I think he has been behaving more like a baby (rather than a newborn) and we have been 'playing' with him more because he's not just in the sleep/feed/sleep cycle anymore. He is smiling regularly now and much more alert so I think you will probably find the same kind of thing happening with Riley in a few weeks time. He will let you know when he needs more stimulation so just follow his lead. Hope this helps!

Hm...I just sort of followed his lead. He is almost 8 mos old now and still on a 3 hour schedule like in the NICU. But he spends 1-2 hour awake in between each cycle now. He spent 9 weeks in the NICU (born 30 weeks) and came home 5 days before his due date. He pretty much acted like a NB sleeping most of hte day for about another month. But he was also more alert than a NB if that makes any sense. When he started acting sleepy, I put him down to sleep. I would just follow his lead!